Design and Development of Miniature Dual Antenna GPS-GLONASS Receiver for Uninterrupted and Accurate Navigation

Global Positioning System (GPS), Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), and GPS-GLONASS receivers are commonly used for navigation. However, there are some applications where a single antenna interface to a GPS or GPS-GLONASS receiver will not suffice. For example, an airborne platform such as an Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) will need multiple antennae during maneuvering. Also, some applications will need redundancy of antenna connectivity to prevent loss of positioning if a link to satellite fails. The scope of this work is to design a dual antenna GPS-GLONASS navigation receiver and implement it in a very small form-factor to serve multiple needs such as: provide redundancy when a link fails, and provide uninterrupted navigation even under maneuvering, also provide improved performance by combining data from both signal paths. Both hardware and software architectures are analyzed before implementation. A set of objectives are identified for the receiver which will serve as the benchmarks against which the receiver will be validated. Both analysis and objectives are highlighted in this paper. The results from the tests conducted on such a dual antenna GPS-GLONASS receiver have given positive results on several counts that promise a wider target audience for such a solution.